discussion / Camera Traps  / 3 December 2021

Wifi trail camera

Hello again everyone been a while since I have been online a lot of great ideas I see being posted.
 

The reason for my post is I am working on a idea for a long range wifi trail camera using the basic cameras and solar panel I can find on Amazon her is my idea and in theory it should work.

i am using a reolink camera with solar panel and using a tplink N300 long range outdoor cpe for pte, the idea is to mount this on a barn and connect to the home internet and point it at the wifi reolink solar power camera , I say in theory this should work but I have used ubiquiti devices to stretch internet out to a mile away and had success, and with the reolink I can use the app to capture motion it's the camera.

Any feed back would be nice, the reason I am doing this cause there is no true wifi trail camera on the market.

there are cellular trail cameras --- we have some and they work great 

Ther are wifi / Bluetooth cameras ---- they create there own wifi Bluetooth signal and can not connect to home wifi

so what I am looking for is a true WiFi trail camera that can connect to a existing home wifi if one of those exist I could then write a program to upload photos to a web server 

 

 

 




This seems like an eminently sensible thing to try. The main issue I've seen with most wifi cameras is that their antennas are omnidirectional - i.e. they send in every (horizontal) direction, because they don't know where the other wifi endpoint is. That means their signal doesn't go very far, but it's easy to connect. The tplink (and ubiquiti) long range devices have very directional antennas, so their signal is very focussed in that direction, which effectively means it remains quite strong for some distance. They also have to listen for the (more-interesting) return signal though from the wifi camera, and that could cause you grief. However, the highly-directional antenna can pick up fainter signals, from the direction they are pointing at, so it may be ok.

Getting wifi (or any radio signal) over any distance depends a lot on circumstances (distances, terrain, vegetation, weather, interference, ...) so I can't generalise to say this would/wouldn't work. You'd have to try it and see (or get into wifi signal strength measurements and calculations, which you can do with some apps). Some cameras also have removable antennas, so you could replace an omnidirectional (stick) antenna with something much more directional. Or, set up a wifi bridge, with e.g. a ubiquiti point-to-point link, with one end is close to your wifi camera (to pick up its weaker signal) and the other end at the house.

There are plenty of wifi wildlife cameras on ebay, which I understood use their own wifi hotspot to learn how to connect to a broader wifi network - same as the reolink, etc. when you first set them up. Lacking a broader wifi network they might offer their own as a fallback, so you can download while walking by. But I've not tried them, as they are quite expensive, and I have little faith their wifi signal would reach far enough (as per above) for our needs. I'm trying to build my own wildlife cameras now, using esp32cam modules and an external wifi antenna, just waiting on a few more parts :-)

 

Markusb very true but those camera are not truly wifi, they are a wifi /Bluetooth camera , meaning the create there own  wifi network to down load the pics you have to connect to that network.

 

Now in saying that I have not experimented in writing a code using a programming language to be able to turn on and off wifi or Bluetooth and then turn it back off and tell the code to be able to do this ever two hours or so.

But  using a small form factor pc that is connect to a ubiquiti or tplink long range wifi device this is possible to a Bluetooth / wifi trail camera 

Ok, understand. Note, the bluetooth feature is very short range, just to configure the camera from your phone when standing nearby. Wifi will give you some longer range and greater bandwidth for image/video downloads. If it is only offering its own wifi network then that is sad, but unsurprising (they try to be very simple/cheap). Doesn't change my point though about the signal strength - if you are trying to get a really long distance (which is "over 100m" on most wifi cameras) then you will need to add something in between. A dedicated NUC/RPi/small-PC would be one option - but your reolink already has a simple PC built in, that offers the remote control and download features and storage to an SD card, etc. You can write your code to talk to that, from your home, using the reolink API/CGI (https://support.reolink.com/hc/en-us/articles/900000625763-What-is-CGI-API). The small PC might still need to handle the "long-distance" wifi link if appropriate for your needs, in which case a ubiquiti/tplink wifi bridge (and a PC at home) might be more cost-effective? That can basically extend the camera's wifi back to your home.

This might need some whiteboarding and actual site-information to optimise :-)